Media and Youths’ Political Engagement during the 2015 Nigerian General Election

Abstract

The centrality of media to political and civic engagement has received tremendous exploration in many climes across the globe. Similarly, the dynamism that characterised media landscape has oftentimes called for continuing interrogation of the role of media in democratic and civic movements, discourses and participations. While the advent of new/social media led to the comparative exploration of the potency of legacy and novel media, mixed findings have characterised these research endeavours. Besides, most of the findings originated from advanced democratic hemisphere. In view of this gap in the literature, this study sampled 350 Nigerian university students in Kwara state during the 2015 Nigerian General Election to examine the differential contributions of legacy and novel media to the youths’ political engagement. Premised on media displacement theory, the study anticipates differences in the contribution of mainstream and new media to youths’ political engagement, with new media precipitating more civic engagement than the mains- tream media. Findings offer important contributions on the role of media to youths’ political engagement in general and the continuing importance of the mainstream media to civic and political participation among the youths.